The present invention relates to determining insertion loss of an optical component.
Optical components are used in advanced optical networks and normally undergo comprehensive tests during manufacturing. Components which are likely to be coupled in concatenation connection in a large number (for example in submarine applications) have the particular requirements that their insertion loss has to be characterized with high accuracy, such as 10 mdB or even better. Those components are typically pigtailed, i.e. provided with an optical fiber at the input and/or output for optically coupling to the components, and need to be connected to a testing instrument for characterization.
The problem, however, arises that the uncertainty introduced in a measurement if a fiber optic connector or a bare fiber connection is being used might by far exceed the required accuracy for the characterization. Typical solutions for addressing this problem are either to simply adapt the specification of the optical component to the limited measuring accuracy, or to minimize the insertion loss resulting from optical connections to optical component. In the former case, the specifications of the optical component usually contain the uncertainties of the connection to and from the optical component. In the latter case, the (e.g. pigtailed) fiber connections of the optical component are usually spliced in the lead fibers of the measurement instrument. Such splicing connections can be reproduced with very low losses and uncertainties. This, however, has the disadvantage that this splicing process takes additional time, and also some lengths of the pigtailed fiber connection of the optical component is being consumed for each splicing.